The Day After Tomorrow

Wednesday

Nov 28, 2007 at 12:01 AM

Roland Emmerich seems to have a bone to pick with humanity. He's like a genocidal Irwin Allen, not content with placing a city, state, or entire country in harm's way. No, Emmerich wants nothing less than global devastation of the highest order. In Independence Day his alien invaders vaporized landmarks, fried skyscrapers, and left major cities in ruins. In The Day After Tomorrow, the human race should only be so fortunate. This time out, Emmerich isn't content with extraterrestrial surgical strikes, or giant lizards stomping through gymnasiums.

Roland Emmerich seems to have a bone to pick with humanity. He's like a genocidal Irwin Allen, not content with placing a city, state, or entire country in harm's way. No, Emmerich wants nothing less than global devastation of the highest order. In Independence Day his alien invaders vaporized landmarks, fried skyscrapers, and left major cities in ruins. In The Day After Tomorrow, the human race should only be so fortunate. This time out, Emmerich isn't content with extraterrestrial surgical strikes, or giant lizards stomping through gymnasiums. This time...it's personal.

Jack Hall (Quaid), a paleoclimatologist (say that ten times fast!), warns the world of a series of super storms that will usher in the new ice age as a result of global warming. His claims are scoffed at by the U.S. vice president (Kenneth Walsh, portraying the closest thing to a human villain in the film) at an international summit, but his predictions are soon realized as cities around the world begin to experience bizarre weather anomalies. At first, they are greeted as freak incidents (Tokyo residents being bludgeoned by basketball sized chunks of ice notwithstanding), but when Los Angeles becomes tornado alley, the U.K. an uninhabitable ice box, and New York completely flooded and frozen, the president is ready to listen to Jack. Meanwhile, Jack's son Sam (Gyllenhall) is trapped in New York, and his father makes a harrowing trek up the icy east coast to rescue him.

The Day After Tomorrow is a great piece of eye candy, with an epic story and spectacular special effects, but, once the focus shifts toward it's main characters, the film becomes a third-rate survival drama/love story. Much like Independence Day, once the initial excitement of the destruction is over, things get slow and melodramatic. Jack seeks to redeem himself by rescuing his son. Jack struggles with whether or not to tell Lucy (Sela Ward) that he loves her. I guess Emmerich is trying to show us that, even in the face of extinction, human beings are essentially...well...humans being. Despite the horrible situation Jack finds himself in, there is always room for love, and it's never too late to say you're sorry. It's actually typical disaster movie fare that you'll find in everything from "The Poseidon Adventure" to "The Towering Inferno", and, while this film is of a decidedly bigger scale, it still embraces those conventions.

While the script itself is a bit weak, no one will be lining up for this film expecting David Mamet, and, thankfully, the melodramatic lulls in the movie are few and far between. The movie's politics are obvious, as the U.S. government's lax environmental policies are blamed for the global chaos. It's an obvious swipe at the Bush administration for it's pull-out from the Kyoto treaty, and the film's president is depicted as an imbecilic puppet to his Vice President (just like in real life!!). While I've usually no time or patience for filmmakers who preach their partisan politics on my dime (hello, Michael Moore), Emmerich gets a pass here seeing as how his vision of global warming is science fiction that completely ignores the "science", rendering it little more than a harmless diversion. Still, if people take any of this to heart maybe the world will be better for it.

The DVD from Fox is rather skint. While it features a glorious transfer and insanely rich 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, the only extra features are a pair of commentary tracks, a few deleted scenes, and an "Audio Anatomy" interactive thing that allows one to put together the sound effects for a scene. While that's all quite nice, I wouldn't mind a look at how these fantastic special effects were created, as they are the real star of the film. Of course, that's where two-disc ultimate super-duper glow-in-the-dark special editions come in, and I'm sure The Day After Tomorrow will get said treatment sooner than later.

This is a popcorn flick through and through, and fulfills that description perfectly, however The Day After Tomorrow's exciting, awe-inspiring visuals are more than enough to recommend giving this disaster flick a look.